


second chances

by mercuryhatter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e13 The Song Remains the Same, Episode: s06e20 The Man Who Would Be King, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2033646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel isn't able to save Anna completely, but he can let her be reborn. this leads to a coincidence that makes him hopeful once more that he might be able to turn to God for a sign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	second chances

**Author's Note:**

> the beginning of this takes place immediately following The Song Remains the Same, and the end is at the very beginning of The Man Who Would Be King.

                Castiel is told what happened to Anna after he wakes up, once again in the present, and he feels as sick as if he had carried out his own threat to her.  Any angel’s death is felt deeply by all of the Host, but Anna was disgraced, out of control, and Castiel is the only one left to remember her. He is desperately limited in power by his disconnection from Heaven, but when the idea occurs to him he can’t shake it—no one can erase energy from existence, not even Michael. Something of Anna is left in the universe, somewhere.

                It takes time, but Castiel gathers up the pieces of her that he can find. It’s not all of her by any means, just scraps, threads of grace that sing with familiarity, but he gathers them all. He is almost glad that this is what befell Anna: not being taken back to Heaven, not continuing to be used as a weapon in a war she never asked for. He can return her to what she wanted, what she gave up everything to have for herself. He finds a woman whose soul is ragged with prayers for fertility, clinging to a few last hopeful thoughts— _maybe this time, this time it has to work—_ and he deposits the precious things he carries inside of her. He has enough energy left to coax the woman’s womb into accepting the embryo it was trying to make. In nine months there will be a baby born to two thrilled mothers, with a red tint to her dark, tightly curled hair.

                Afterwards Castiel feels as if he could sleep for years, but they are running out of time, and now—as if he needed more reasons to protect this Earth and its humans—there is the tiny promise of a second chance.

                He has died twice, ended one war, started another, and made a deal with the devil by the time he sees her again. Desperate just for a chance to catch his breath, he slips into the back pew of a church in a town that is vaguely familiar to him. They are putting on a children’s play for Easter, which is a shock to Castiel—he hadn’t even realized what day it was. Most of the children seem to be between eight and ten, with a few older taking the larger parts, but a choir of them dressed as angels comes out at the end. The younger ones are accompanied by parents, and the sight of a chubby little toddler clutching her mother’s hand floors Castiel, shocking the breath out of him. He has never seen her before but he has known the soul of her mother, and even more deeply, he  _knows_  the little girl. Somehow he has ended up back here, two years and lifetimes later, to see this little girl with a tinsel halo on her puffy reddish hair, smiling and laughing while her mother moves her hands to the music. It’s the first time he has felt anything like hope in a very long time, and when the service is over, he finds himself on a park bench, staring at his hands and pleading to someone that, two years ago, he had cursed for His abandonment.

                “Let me tell you my story,” he says, looking up at the sky. “Let me tell you everything.”


End file.
